“Hey, folks! How are you doing today? Out catching fish or just sun?”
To anyone listening, this sounds like a typical conversation between passing boaters. And while the exchange is brief and friendly, the sleek boat being piloted by Evansville Police Sgt. John Montgomery is not out on the Ohio River for a pleasure cruise.
Launched in April, the Joint River Patrol Unit operated by the Evansville Police Department and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office gives the water around Evansville a consistent law enforcement presence, something it has lacked for 30 years.
“Presence is prevention,” says co-pilot and EPD Sgt. Mark Saltzman. “People know we’re out here, and we have as many positive interactions as we can.”
Vanderburgh County had a river patrol until the mid-1990s, when its vessel broke and there wasn’t money for repairs. After that, “we were completely dependent on Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officers, but they don’t have manpower,” Sheriff Noah Robinson says. The U.S. Coast Guard, whose regional office operates out of Louisville, Kentucky, does not have regular inland river patrols on the waters around Evansville.
Local river patrols look for violations of local, state, and federal boating laws, and law enforcement personnel can issue citations and even make arrests. When an Evansville Business writer and photographer joined a patrol in late July, the unit had responded a few calls about stranded boaters but no water accidents. Saltzman says most of the unit’s work is spotting and addressing potentially unsafe actions, such as unlit vessels after dark, intoxicated boaters, and the improper use of life preservers. “Few people out here have the intent to do wrong — they just don’t know they’re doing something wrong,” he says.
Robinson credits Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer Rob Henson for helping revive the local river patrol by applying for a grant through the U.S. Coast Guard Port Security program and Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Rob did the heavy lifting,” Robinson says, noting that the idea of a city-county partnership sparked during the application process. “It was very competitive. Other local agencies also applied,” he says. “Our application was more attractive if it were a joint operation with the city.”
Once the grant was approved, local officials purchased the 200-horsepower twin-engine watercraft from Metal Shark and had it outfitted with a depth gauge and side-imaging sonar for underwater search operations. Robinson says the grant paid for 75 percent of the total cost, which was around $306,000. Local personnel picked up the outfitted boat in Louisiana and tested it in the Gulf of Mexico. (Its sonar picked up crab pots.)
After the boat — named Riverwolf — was delivered in fall 2025, EPD and VCSO selected 18 personnel — evenly split between the agencies — from internal applicants to attend boating safety, tactical, and rescue training exercises with Louisville Metro Police and Jeffersonville Police Department in Kentucky. Shifts are manned by 2-3 deputies and officers, who serve on an overtime basis. An April 17 press release from the Sheriff’s Office says a separate grant from the Indiana DNR Division of Law Enforcement will pay for overtime accrued from river patrol assignments.
The vessel was christened by city and county officials April 17 in a ceremony at Dress Plaza. Operated on weekends during the traditional boating season from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the patrol — call sign: River One — covers approximately 36 miles of shoreline from the Warrick to Posey county lines. This area includes the Port of Evansville as well as the sides of the river technically in Kentucky.
Montgomery and Saltzman, who worked together at the Posey County Sheriff’s Office before joining EPD in 2008, volunteered for the joint unit since both grew up on the water. “Many guys on the unit have their own boats and experience on the water, but some of them have never even been on a boat,” Saltzman says. “Our job as more experienced officers is to get them up to speed.”
The unit is available to assist neighboring jurisdictions, fulfilling another need: Robinson says that aside from Evansville Fire Department, Indiana’s DNR, and Perry Township first responders, no other regional agencies have a river patrol unit.
“Evansville is a city on the water, but it’s not a water city,” Saltzman says. “The boating community is mostly on weekends.” Since they encounter mostly recreational boaters, they stock the vessel with gear such as life rings, rescue throw ropes, medical kits, an AED, and personal flotation devices.
The Joint River Patrol Unit can be deployed for special events that see increased recreational boating activity, such as this summer’s Independence Day fireworks shows in Evansville and Henderson, Kentucky. Fireworks are launched from a barge in the Ohio River, meaning a permit to use the federal waterway for the show is required from the captain of the port in Ohio. Montgomery says the unit patrolled 500 feet in all directions, the typical safety zone around a barge.
Whether encountering a family spending an afternoon on the water or a 1,500-ton barge transporting grain toward the Newburgh Lock & Dam, Saltzman says Joint River Patrol Unit’s goal is consistent: “We educate when we can and enforcement when we have to.”
